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Thought I'd document my campervan refurbishment on here. I trust this is of interest to shitters, but please tell me if not!
I purchased this van in 2016 and its sat about around my house since then. As usual, I have too many projects and not enough time to work on them. Anyways, with the old virus thing about, I've managed to clear some of the backlog and got this one to the front of the queue. As holidays look to be in doubt this year, I'm aiming to get this mobile for a family holiday around August some time. Immediate plans are to refurb the underside and give it a good clean and paint underneath. I'll then take it for an MOT and then see what I can manage on it internally and externally, before we need to go away in it.
Onto the beast in question then. I paid £4000 for this with an MOT, from a chap not 20 miles down the road in Rugby. I've only literally driven it back from there to my house (not counting driveway shifting about). I wanted a campervan for touring about. I'd say with the family, but my two kids are now 18 and 15, with 18 year old happily driving her own car. Best laid plans and all that...... This van struck a chord with me as it is bigger than your average VW bay window van, but still small enough to fit in a normal parking bay. Plenty of room inside and complete with a toilet! One double bed in the roof and one double bed below. If you are ambitious, you can also fit a hammock across the front seats (although it didn't come with one of those). This is the floorpan:

This is how it turned up (and still looks like at present):

Its LHD (all the LT westfalia vans are). 2.4 turbo diesel. Five speed gearbox with the engine thrumming away between the front seats. Initial impressions from driving it were "Fuck 'me, this is wide...... how do I change gear with my right hand....... the suspension is too bouncy..........the brakes are shit....."

Well I've been meaning to sign up here in forever, but kept forgetting. Thanks to someone over on another forum I frequent poking me about it recently the subject was forced back into my very brief attention span for long enough to get me to act on the instruction.

I figure that my little varied fleet might bring you lot some amusement...

Now getting the photos together has taken me far longer than I'd expected...so you're gonna get a couple of photos of each car for now, and I'll come back with some more information tomorrow when I've got a bit more time...

Firstly...The Lada. Before anyone asks - in response to the single question I get asked about this car: No, it is not for sale. Took me 13 years and my father's inheritance to find the thing.

Yes, it's got the usual rusty wings...Hoping that will be resolved in the next couple of months.

Next, a proper old Saab. One of the very last 8 valve cars apparently, and all the better for it. I've driven two 16v autos and they were horrible - the auto box works sooooo much better with the torque curve of the 8 valve engine. Just wish it had an overdrive for motorway cruising...

Next up a *real* Skoda...back when they put the engine where it belongs, right out the back. In the best possible colour of course...eye-searingly bright orange.

Seat covers have been added since that photo was taken as it suffers from the usual rotting seat cloth problem that affects virtually all Estelles.

Then we have possibly the world's scruffiest Sinclair C5...

Realised when looking for this that I really need to get some more photos of the thing...I use it often enough after all! We have a dog who's half husky, so this is a really good way of getting him some exercise.

Finally - again, I really need to take more photos of - we have the little Pug 107.

Included for the sake of variety even if it's a bit mainstream! First (and probably to be the only) new car I've bought, and has been a cracking little motor and has asked for very little in return for putting up with nearly three years of Oxford-Milton Keynes commuter traffic, before finally escaping that fate when my housemate moved to a new job. Now it doesn't do many miles and is my default car for "when I've managed to break everything else."

I'll fill in some more details tomorrow - I warn you though that I do tend to ramble...

I'm a masochist from Leeds who is running two rusty, worn out Triumph Dolomites as my only transport in rural Aberdeenshire. You might recognise me from various other forums and Facebook groups. Realistically I need to buy a modern car of some sort, but instead I find myself looking at Ã‚Â£300 Citroen BXs and Triumph Acclaims on Gumtree and thinking "yeah, that'd fit right in with the rest of the broken cars I can't afford".

On to the cars, the main attraction being my 1976 1850HL "50 Shades of Yellow" that I bought for Ã‚Â£850 and is currently my daily driver, here is a picture of it before I sanded off some surface rust and sprayed it badly in the wrong shade of yellow with rattle cans:

Within a month of purchase I managed to plant it in to a steel fence backwards after a botched gear change on a wet roundabout and ruined the N/S rear wing, although judging by the other dent that's packed with filler it looks like somebody had already done the same. I also managed to destroy a halfshaft and one of my Sprint alloys (good for an extra 15hp) in the incident, so now it's sitting on it's original steelies but painted black (good for an extra 5hp).

It's only broken down on me twice. once with some sort of fuel delivery related problem which may or may not have been an empty fuel tank and once when the thermostat jammed shut and it overheated and blew out some O-rings for the cooling system. It has recently developed a taste for coolant and oil which is rather annoying, although it's done 89,300 miles which is about 80,000 more miles than BL engineering is designed to last, I'm keeping my eye on eBay for replacement engines...
I tried to keep ahead of the rust a bit by rubbing down the arches and re-painting them, but apparently rattle can paint isn't great when you are spraying it at -5C, it also highlighted how although my car might have been Inca Yellow in 1976 it's now more of a "cat piss" sort of shade. So I ended up with the wrong shade of yellow which has rust coming back through after 5 weeks. Did I mention I'm incompetent?

The other car is the first "classic" car I bought, so I can't bear to sell it. It's a '77 Dolomite 1300 and it cost Ã‚Â£1400 (about Ã‚Â£400 too much) and has been nothing but a pain in the arse:

It looks much prettier (from 100 yards) but that's most due to the darker paintwork hiding the rust. It lives a mollycoddled life in my garage, where it somehow still manages to rust, and is utterly rubbish. 0-60 is measured on a calendar, top speed is 80ish but at that point it uses more oil than petrol, it rarely ventures over 50mph and if you encounter an incline of any sort you can kiss that sort of speed goodbye, along with about Ã‚Â£20 of 20W50 as it vanishes out of the exhaust in the form of blue smoke.

One of the PO's had clearly never heard of the term "oil change" so it developed into brown sludge that coated everything internally with the next owner(s) blissfully pouring fresh oil on top of it. This lasted until about 600 miles into my ownership when there was muffled "pop" from the engine bay and the car became a 3-cylinder. The cause was catastrophic wear to the top end causing a rocker arm to snap:

As this was my first classic car I'd assumed it was supposed to sound like the engine was full of marbles, it wasn't.

I put the engine back together with second hand bits declared it utterly fucked and promptly did another 5000 miles with it. After about 3500 of those miles the oil burning started, valve seals have gone so it's been relegated to my parent's garage as a backup car and something to take to local car shows as the 1850 is now embarrassingly ugly. I'm keeping my eye on eBay for replacement engines (deja vu, anybody?) Oh, I also recently reversed it into a parked Ford Fiesta and royally fucked up the rear bumper, rear panel and bootlid. Did I mention I'm incompetent?

There have been two other cars in my life. My first car, a 2008 Toyota Yaris 1.0 an it's replacement a 2012 Corsa 1.4T. I didn't really want either of them, but it's a long story involving my parents and poor life choices. Ask if you want to hear it!

So that's a brief summary of my current shite. If you want more pictures or details of anything do say as I've got photos of almost everything I'd done with the cars.

Hi all, new to the forum. Thought you might be interested in what I've got myself into
I'd been after my first classic car for a while. If it's big and made in the 70s I'm interested. Looked at few things like P6s, Zodiacs, Victors, SD1s and various other things. Problem was I didn't want to spend a boatload of money on something that looked alright but underneath was actually a total heap. The solution was to buy a complete heap in the first place and spend the money fixing it.
So in January I went ahead and bought this from a colleague at work who was moving away and needed to get shot of it.

It's a part finished restoration (I prefer not started) and it needs a whole load of help if it's going to stand any chance of using a road again.
Pros
It's right up my street. Granada Coupes are quite odd and certainly stand out from the norm.
It still has the original engine, box, interior and most trim.
It came with loads of panels I need to repair it (mostly original Ford stock).
It came with so many spares I could probably build a few Granadas and still have stuff left over.
It was cheap.
Cons
Most of the front end has been cut off.
Most of the body structure is quite rotten.
It's going to take me ages.
I work at a restoration company and my boss kindly allows me to keep the car there. So I've got access to all the gear I need to restore it. I've been busy on the car for a while now so will post more pics over the coming days.
Cheers